This is a place that everyone can share their views on a host of different topics. You will have a host of Political threads and a mix of possible relationship entry's with life stories.
I will also recommend Movies, Computer Advice, and some software you can use. If you have any questions regarding a posting or a general question about PC's, just contact me at the email address listed. Enjoy. Pulling Stories You May Have Missed! This Site May Take A Minute to load so be Patient!

Monday, December 31, 2012

For most of 2012, Texas officials have been working hard to strip funding from the Planned Parenthood clinics in their state. Those officials advanced their anti-choice agenda on Monday, when a visiting judge ruled that Texas may deny funding from Planned Parenthood affiliates in the new year simply because the organization advocates for abortion rights.

I am nobody. I promise. But I talk to lots of somebodies in my job as a celebrity freelance journalist. I'm happily writing for The Huffington Post now, and that helps the cause but my name isn't Oprah or Katie or Ellen so it's a bit more of a challenge for me to get an interview with the A-List population of actors in the Hollywood community than it is for those high-profile mega-star talk-show hosts.

WASHINGTON -- With hours remaining to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, President Barack Obama said a deal is “within sight” and urged lawmakers to come together to avert automatic tax hikes and spending cuts that kick in on Tuesday.

A measure requiring the office of the Director of National Intelligence to report to Congress on the consequences of a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities will not be included in the FY2013 Intelligence Authorization Act.

Following President Obama’s re-election — supported by a large majority of Latino voters — even House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) came out in support of comprehensive immigration reform. The president is preparing to “begin an all out drive” for immigration reform in January, so 2013 needs to be the year that Congress passes a comprehensive plan that includes a path to citizenship.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

President Obama reiterated his call for comprehensive immigration reform during an interview on Meet The Press, claiming that the effort will be a top goal in his second term. “Fixing our broken immigration is a top priority. I will introduce legislation in the first year to get that done,” Obama said.

President Obama called the Dec. 14th shooting in Newtown, Connecticut “the worst day of my presidency,” and said during a rare interview on Meet The Press, that he will propose a package of reforms that will likely include new regulations on assault-rifles and high-capacity ammunition clips, and enhanced background checks for gun purchases. A commission headed by Vice President Joe Biden is currently drafting gun safety recommendations.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) urged lawmakers to embrace a package that could avert the so-called fiscal cliff, noting that 2.1 million Americans have already lost federal unemployment benefits as a result of Congressional inaction. “From this point on, it is lose-lose,” Feinstein explained, during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “My big worry, is, a contraction of the economy. The loss of jobs, which could be well over 2 million in addition to the people already on unemployment.”

On Friday, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in an order joined by two conservative Republican appointees, temporarily immunized a company from the Obama Administration’s rules guaranteeing that employer-provided health plans cover birth control. Judge Ilana Rovner, a George H.W. Bush appointee, dissented.

Last week, the Senate quietly agreed to allow video streaming companies such as Netflix to share data on of their customers’ streaming histories to two years — after only asking their permission once. The Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), had previously mandated that consent be obtained from an individual each time their video-watching history was shared, required law enforcement to obtain a warrant, court order, or grand jury subpoena to acquire that history, and prevented companies from sharing it for marketing purposes. The new bill has already been adopted by the House, and is now on its way to President Obama’s desk. Adam Serwer at Mother Jones has the latest:

NEW DELHI -- A young woman who died after being gang-raped and beaten on a bus in India's capital was cremated Sunday amid an outpouring of anger and grief by millions across the country demanding greater protection for women from sexual violence.

Well, as you might expect, we will have full-on fiscal cliff panic today, with Senators Dianne Feinstein and Lindsay Graham. Hopefully they will talk about the way in which their two parties "came together" this week in bipartisan fashion to guarantee that our electronic communication will be under constant surveillance forever. That's the wonderful thing about bipartisanship, it spawns no end of terrible, irresponsible nonsense.

WASHINGTON -- In his first Sunday show interview since his reelection, President Barack Obama admonished congressional Republicans for their unwillingness to compromise over debt reduction and implored the media to cast aside its pox-on-both-your-houses coverage.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Florida took center stage in the 2012 elections, when voters around the state had to wait in line at the polls for up to nine hours. Gov. Rick Scott (R) initially denied that there was any problem, saying it was "very good" that people were getting out to vote.

Friday, December 28, 2012

Craft store chain Hobby Lobby announced on Friday that it will ignore the ruling of U.S. courts and refuse to provide copay-free birth control access to its employees. It will do so despite whatever costs it may incur, even if they are higher than the cost of birth control itself.

House Democrats proposed legislation in June that would have raised the national minimum wage to $10 an hour, but Republicans blocked it. The minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour, even though it would need to be raised to $9.92 to match the borrowing power it had in 1968. If it was indexed to inflation, it would be $10.40 today.

Unless a deal is reached with management, some 14,000 East Coast port workers plan to go on strike on Sunday, affecting ports from Boston to Miami. Here’s what you need to know about the impending strike:

Major banks this year paid $10.7 billion in fines for a host of transgressions, including money laundering and foreclosure fraud. As CNN Money noted, “Slightly more than half of the fines were related to improper mortgage practices.” However, those fines won’t put much of a dent in the financial sector’s bottom line, as “Thomson Reuters estimates that the financial sector stocks in the S&P 500 earned $167.7 billion in profits this year, up 21% from 2011.”

For weeks, Democratic senators have been crafting a filibuster reform package that, if it resembles the reforms embraced by Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), will include reforms that prevent the minority from imposing hours of needless delay every time a new nominee is confirmed, and which will also include the so-called “talking filibuster” that requires supporters of a filibuster to speak on the floor in order to maintain it.

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. House of Representatives will convene on Sunday in a last-minute effort to avoid the steep spending cuts and tax cuts scheduled to take effect at the end of the year. But Sunday will already be too late for long-term unemployment insurance, which will almost certainly lapse on Saturday thanks to congressional inaction.

NAIROBI, Kenya -- The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday he will sign a controversial bill barring Americans from adopting Russian children, while the Kremlin's children's rights advocate recommended extending the ban to the rest of the world.

From Geraldo Rivera's 'hoodie' comment to Megyn Kelly reporting that US farmers were being spied on by drones to Liz Trotta saying women in the military should expect they might be raped, it's been a crazy year over at Fox News.

The Supreme Court said Wednesday it will not block an Obamacare mandate that employers must provide insurance coverage for contraception. Hobby Lobby, a craft chain, was seeking an emergency injunction against the mandate after both a federal and district judge ruled against it. While Hobby Lobby can still pursue its lawsuit that claims the mandate violates religious freedom, Justice Sonia Sotomayor ruled that it could not show that an injunction blocking the mandate from taking effect was “necessary or appropriate.”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) yesterday punted negotiations over how to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff” back to the Senate, but in that chamber, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is now demanding spending cuts to pay for an extension to the federal unemployment insurance program that expires at the end of the year.

Thousands of Los Angeles’ citizens lined parking lots yesterday in a chance to exchange their guns for groceries in a city-organized buyback program. The event, normally an annual Mother’s Day event, was pushed up to Wednesday by L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in the aftermath of the tragic shooting in Newtown, CT.

Washington state lawmakers introduced a bill that would have outlawed the paper dollar, because “only gold and silver may be recognized as government legal tender.” This is just part and parcel of the extreme right’s continuing fascination with goldbuggery, a fascination to which the Republican party’s presidential candidates gladly pandered.

Hawaii's Lt. Gov. Brian Schatz has been chosen to replace the late Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii).

Hawaii Democrats picked U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, Schatz and Department of Land and Natural Resources Deputy Director Esther Kiaaina as final nominees for the open U.S. Senate seat. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie announced Schatz as Inouye's replacement Wednesday evening.

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Progressive veterans group VoteVets.org has received thousands of signatures from concerned citizens, veterans and military families rejecting “neocon smears” against former Republican senator Chuck Hagel.

The United States will hit its borrowing limit on December 31st, according to a just-released letter from Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. As a result, Congress must vote to raise the debt ceiling in the next five days or “extraordinary measures” will have to be taken to avoid defaulting on our debt, but this would only buy two months. Geithner’s letter also notes that if the so-called “fiscal cliff” is not avoided, the resulting spending cuts and tax increases would add a bit more wiggle room before hitting the debt limit. Last time the country faced a fight over raising the debt ceiling, the Tea Party’s intransigence and willingness to risk the full faith and credit of the United States caused our national credit rating to be downgraded.

On Feb. 9, 1844, the governor of Missouri ate breakfast, went to his office and locked the door. Then he shot himself with a rifle. Thomas Reynolds’ death rattled the state and inspired a conversation about mental illness that led to the founding of its first public mental hospital.

Frank Luntz, a top Republican strategist and pollster, said Wednesday that the National Rifle Association's recent calls for armed guards to be stationed at every school in the wake of the Newtown, Conn. massacre suggested the organization isn't listening to public opinion on the issue.

The past two years have not been kind to voting rights. Across the country, the Tea Party wave of 2010 led to new restrictive voting measures, including photo identification requirements and cuts in early voting. In total, these changes had the potential to disenfranchise more than 5 million Americans.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- A federal judge on Monday denied a request by Planned Parenthood to temporarily block Oklahoma from terminating a contract with the agency to provide nutritional services to low-income mothers.

HONOLULU — President Barack Obama will cut short his traditional Christmas holiday in Hawaii, planning to leave for Washington on Wednesday evening as he and lawmakers consider how to prevent the economy from going over the so-called fiscal cliff.

MOSCOW, Dec 24 (Reuters) - Russian prosecutors on Monday dropped their accusations against the only person being tried in connection with the prison death of anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, asking a court to find a former prison official not guilty.

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

In a controversial diatribe on Friday, Wayne LaPierre, CEO of the National Rifle Association, blamed lax security, natural disasters, and, most of all, violent video games for the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT that claimed 27 lives. Despite the NRA’s public condemnation of violent entertainment, the New York Times explains, the gun industry is closely entwined with the gaming industry.

Karl Rove didn’t just predict Romney would win beforehand; he actually insisted that Romney still may win Ohio after Fox News called Ohio for Obama. Fox host Megyn Kelly even replied, “Is this the math you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better?”

The United Nations voted late Christmas Eve to once again take up a global arms trade treaty in March. The treaty would regulate global weapons exports and have no effect on domestic gun laws. Still, the US failed to ratify it in July, mainly due to conspiracy theories advanced by conservatives, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, and the National Rifle Association that suggested the U.N. would revoke American gun rights.

A petition to deport CNN host Piers Morgan over his heated comments on gun control has reached more than 62,000 signatures in just 4 days, far exceeding the threshold required for a White House response. A petition must get 25,000 signatures in 30 days in order to elicit a response.

Monday, December 24, 2012

On December 12, 2012, the family of shooting victim Jitka Vesel sued the online gun market Armslist.com for the wrongful death of their loved one, who had been shot about 12 times in a parking lot in Illinois, by a gunman who had illegally obtained his weapon on the website.

In passing laws to legalize small amounts of marijuana and regulate the industry in Washington and Colorado, supporters joined many local jurisdictions that have decriminalized some drug offenses in signaling their willingness to better tailor drug policy to public health and safety goals. Since the passage of the ballot initiatives, prominent leaders including Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy, former President Bill Clinton and President Obama have hinted that they will reconsider harsh criminal drug policy that has cost the U.S. both money and lives while failing to curb drug abuse.

Sunday, December 23, 2012

HONOLULU (AP) — President Barack Obama is condemning violence in Kenya that left at least 39 people dead in renewed fighting between farming and herding communities that have a history of violent animosity.

Police reports about the final moments of Demetrius Cruz’s life include the kind of information that is at once difficult to fathom and yet somehow part of the ordinary but tragic tapestry of life in the U.S.

GALVESTON, Tex. — Angelica Gonzales marched through high school in Goth armor — black boots, chains and cargo pants — but undermined her pose of alienation with a place on the honor roll. She nicknamed herself after a metal band and vowed to become the first in her family to earn a college degree.

According to internal documents newly released by the FBI, the agency spearheaded a nationwide law enforcement effort to investigate and monitor the Occupy Wall Street movement. In certain documents, divisions of the FBI refer to the Occupy Wall Street protests as a "criminal activity" or even "domestic terrorism."

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Two Pennsylvania state representatives are bringing back an ill-conceived 2011 plan to divvy up its electoral college votes by congressional district. Gov. Tom Corbett (R) originally proposed the idea, which would give one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district. Had the plan succeeded, Pennsylvania Republicans would have delivered 13 of the state’s 20 electoral votes to former GOP candidate Mitt Romney.

House Republicans let the five-year farm bill expire at the end of September without a new law to replace the massive measure covering billions of dollars in programs, including food stamps and agriculture subsidies. The Senate passed its own bipartisan, 10-year farm bill in June, and House Democrats and farm state Republicans attempted to force the House to consider a bill to replace it. But the GOP leadership steadfastly refused to vote on it.

The day after the election last month, ThinkProgress took a preliminary tally of the total number of votes cast for candidates for the House of Representatives. We found that, despite the fact that Republicans won a commanding majority of the seats, the American people cast more than half-a-million votes for Democrats. This number was based on early tallies, however, and it was especially likely to undercount many West Coast states that had less time to count ballots.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Today is December 21, 2012, better known as the day the Mayan calendar ends. Many believe that the Mayans stopped the calendar on this day as they were predicting the end of the world. So this guy from the States decided to have some fun with anyone gullible enough to believe the world was actually ending right then and there.

The National Rifle Association’s CEO and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre finally broke the organization’s silence about the Newtown, Connecticut shooting at a press conference today, delivering a long indictment of the media violence and its demonization of gun owners. LaPierre will also appear on NBC’s Meet the Press this Sunday.

WASHINGTON -- Thursday night's failure by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to garner enough support among House Reopublicans for his fiscal cliff "Plan B" was a major setback for his role as speaker. It was also a clear example of the growing influence of outside groups over the GOP caucus.

While one researcher concedes the findings are "politically volatile," a recent study of gay men in New York City shows the larger a man's penis is, the less likely he is to use a condom, Pink News reports.

House Republicans revolted this evening and rejected Speaker John Boehner’s “Plan B” which would have extended the Bush tax cuts for everyone making $1 million or less, among other provisions. According to Boehner, he canceled a scheduled vote on his plan after it became clear he could not get enough support from Republicans for it to pass. The House is now in recess until after Christmas.

Lifestyles of the Rich and the Famous are often not only interesting due to the resulting glamour, but the “riches to rags” stories that come with building up a small financial empire are just as fasciniating as they are baffling–the list of millionaire sports stars who’ve gone broke would overpopulate even the largest of mansions–from Curt Schilling to Cecil Fielder to Mike Tyson to Lenny Dykstra, tales of athletes losing a whole lot of everything are the furthest thing from uncommon.

Following the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, President Obama has named a White House task force to find “concrete solutions” to address gun violence in the U.S. “If there is even one thing we can do to prevent any of these events, we have a deep obligation — all of us — to try,” Obama said.

Cities and states have seen their budgets decimated during the Great Recession, as revenue plunged due to dropping home prices and high unemployment. They had to make some desperate choices to save funds, including laying off scores of public safety workers (or eventurning offtheir streetlights).

House Republicans today, in addition to voting on Speaker John Boehner’s (R-OH) so-called “Plan B” — which extends the Bush tax cuts on income up to $1 million — will also vote on a bill to replace the spending cuts scheduled for the end of the year.

Owner and chef of the Austin, Texas, restaurant Thai Noodle House (pictured) Eddie Nimibutr is being bombarded with vitriolic Facebook posts for posting incendiary comments about the 27 victims who were brutally executed in the Sandy Hook School massacre in Newtown, Conn., reports KEYE-TV.

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits rose last week by 17,000, reversing four weeks of declines. But the number of people seeking aid is consistent with a job market that continues to grow modestly.

(Reuters) - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected Apple Inc's 'pinch-to-zoom' patent in a preliminary ruling that Samsung Electronics Co Ltd argues supports its request for a new trial in the patent war against its rival.

BEIJING (AP) — Television audiences across China watched an anarchist antihero rebel against a totalitarian government and persuade the people to rule themselves. Soon the Internet was crackling with quotes of "V for Vendetta's" famous line: "People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people."

WASHINGTON -- Reported sexual assaults at the nation's three military academies jumped by 23 percent overall this year, but the data signaled a continued reluctance by victims to seek criminal investigations.

MEXICO CITY -- The world's happiest people aren't in Qatar, the richest country by most measures. They aren't in Japan, the nation with the highest life expectancy. Canada, with its chart-topping percentage of college graduates, doesn't make the top 10.

Guns aren’t the only product flying off the shelves in the wake of the Connecticut elementary school shooting that killed 20 children and 7 adults. Parents hoping to shield their children from the terrible fate that befell the kids of Newtown are purchasing armored backpack, meant to protect fragile bodies from bullet fire.

Ever since Darden Restaurants — the owner of the Olive Garden and Red Lobster chains — first announced its anti-Obamacare campaign, the company has had a tough couple of months. Darden admitted as much when it revised its predictions for latest quarterly earnings down in December, attributing the drop to “recent negative media coverage on Darden [...] and how we might accommodate healthcare reform.”

The National Rifle Association finally broke its silence and announced they would hold a press conference a week after the massacre of 27 people, most of them children around 6 years old, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. In the official statement, gun advocates’ most prominent lobby suggested they would make “meaningful contributions to help make sure this never happens again.”

Managing editor Richard Stengel unveiled the magazine's choice on Wednesday's "Today." He said it was remarkable that the president won two terms with over 50 percent of the popular vote as a Democrat. He also noted that Obama took office in an economic crisis, and credited him with creating a new political "alignment like Ronald Reagan did forty years ago."

WASHINGTON, Dec 19 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will announce on Wednesday that Vice President Joe Biden will lead an effort to come up with policies to address gun violence amid calls for action following the massacre of 26 people including 20 children in a Connecticut elementary school last week.

NEW DELHI -- The hours-long gang-rape and near-fatal beating of a 23-year-old student on a bus in New Delhi triggered outrage and anger across the country Wednesday as Indians demanded action from authorities who have long ignored persistent violence and harassment against women.

Robert Bork, the hard right former judge and failed Reagan Supreme Court nominee, has died. Despite coming just eight senators’ votes away from the Supreme Court, Bork quickly faded into obscurity after his failed confirmation vote. He resigned his seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit shortly after losing his shot to sit on the Supreme Court, and then reemerged into the public eye only occasionally to publish books with Biblical titles such as The Tempting of America or Slouching Towards Gomorrah.

Like most of the Tea Party Republican House Class of 2010, Senator-Designate Tim Scott (R-SC) ran for Congress vowing to eliminate “earmarks” — the system Congressional lawmakers once used to direct federal spending to their districts. But a ThinkProgress examination of public records reveals that in his two years in Congress, he instead used an even less transparent method known as “lettermarking” to attempt to secure funding for his district.

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Most of the ink spilled over negotiations surrounding the so-called “fiscal cliff” — the year-end set of tax increases and spending cuts — has covered the impending demise of the Bush tax cuts. But several other important tax provisions will also expire, some with severe impacts for the middle-class:

Queen Nzinga a Mbande, also known as Ana de Sousa Nzinga Mbande, rose to power as the leader of the Mbundu, an ethnic group of what is known as modern-day Angola. Queen Nzinga lived during the period of the Atlantic slave trade and the rise of Portuguese traders in her region. She was known as a clever military strategist and strong opponent to the trading of slaves in her homeland and saw herself as an equal to male leaders who looked down on her because of gender.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge late Monday rejected Apple Inc.'s demands that its chief rival in the more than $100 billion global smartphone market cease selling models a jury recently found illegally used Apple technology.

Over the past few weeks, tens of thousands of people — including big-name chefs — called on Hasbro, producer of the Easy Bake Oven, to advertise to end their sexist advertising and market to both boys and girls equally.

Commentary – Updated | The hacking collective known as Anonymous renewed their war on the Westboro Baptist Church today. After the haters from the infamous church posted their intentions to picket the funerals of the twenty children killed in the shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, Anonymous responded by re-posting the personal and professional information for members of the church on the Internet. Now the general public can contact the church members directly and tell them what they think about people who would desecrate the funerals of murdered children.

Monday, December 17, 2012

Club For Growth, a conservative advocacy group, is urging Republicans to vote against the $60 billion Hurricane Sandy relief package that the Senate plans to take up this week, according to a statement on its web site.

Crocket Keller, owner of Kellers Riverside Gun Store near Austin, TX, announced on local radio show KRLD that he would start offering a discount for teachers who want to carry a concealed weapon after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut on Friday. Keller talked enthusiastically of the need to arm teachers:

When NBC pre-empted Sunday night’s football game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New England Patriots to air President Barack Obama remarks on the Newtown, Conn., shootings, it generated racist outrage on Twitter.

A piece posted to the Tea Party Nation website yesterday, and sent to the group’s members in an email from TPN head Judson Phillips, blamed the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut on teachers, unions, bureaucracy, and the presence of sex in popular culture. In a lengthy screed that’s essentially a round-up of every major cultural and policy grievance the American right holds with the rest of the country, author Timothy Birdnow cited concerns about the mental health of shooter Adam Lanza, the lack of spanking in schools, and the new movie “Django Unchained” — among other things — as evidence that American popular culture “has made murder, rape, mayhem, hatred, and violence ‘cool.’”

Tim Scott is America’s newest senator today after getting tapped by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) to fill the vacancy left by former Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). DeMint announced this month that he was leaving the Senate to head up the Heritage Foundation, an arch-conservative think tank in Washington DC.

The Sunday morning news shows were dominated by discussion of what can be done after the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, which claimed 28 lives on Friday. Several strong gun control advocates, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) appeared on the morning shows to push for tighter restrictions and a new assault weapons ban. Their counterparts on the pro-gun side of the aisle, however, categorically refused to appear on MSNBC’s ‘Meet the Press’ to discuss the shooting.

WASHINGTON -- In the wake of Friday's mass killing at an elementary school in Connecticut, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said Sunday that she plans to introduce an assault weapons ban bill on the first day of the new Congress.

WASHINGTON -- Signaling new movement in "fiscal cliff" talks, House Speaker John Boehner has proposed raising the top rate for earners making more than $1 million, a person familiar with the negotiations said. President Barack Obama, who wants higher top rates for households earning more than $250,000, has not accepted the offer, this person said.

TOKYO — Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic Party returned to power in a landslide election victory Sunday after three years in opposition, exit polls showed, signaling a rightward shift in the government that could further heighten tensions with rival China.

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- A man was arrested Saturday after firing about 50 shots in the parking lot of a Southern California shopping mall, prompting a lockdown of stores crowded with holiday shoppers.

A petition started yesterday afternoon at the White House’s official petition site has over 87,000 signatures as of this writing calling upon President Obama to “produce legislation that limits access to guns.” According to the petition, “[p]owerful lobbying groups allow the ownership of guns to reach beyond the Constitution’s intended purpose of the right to bear arms. Therefore, Congress must act on what is stated law, and face the reality that access to firearms reaches beyond what the Second Amendment intends to achieve.”

On Friday, police in Bartlesville, Oklahoma arrested an 18-year-old high school student who was planning a school-shooting massacre plot. Sammie Eaglebear Chavez “tried to recruit other students to assist him with carrying out a plan to lure students into the school auditorium where he planned to begin shooting them after chaining the doors shut.”

Rock Hill Herald, a newspaper in South Carolina, printed a large ad for a big gun sale in Rock Hill on the same page as its coverage of Friday’s massacre in Newtown, Connecticut. The ad, which touted Christmas discounts on Smith & Wesson assault rifles, ran in Saturday’s edition on pages A4-A5:

The National Rifle Association (NRA) has remained silent on Friday’s tragic massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, even as gun safety advocates are publicly calling for a national conversation about limiting access to dangerous firearms. While information is still emerging about Adam Lanza — the 20-year-old who killed 20 elementary school students, 6 adults, and his mother — preliminary reports indicate that he used at least three guns: two hand guns and a .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle. The weapons appear to be legally registered to his mother.

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa's former President Nelson Mandela underwent a successful surgery to remove gallstones Saturday, the nation's presidency said, as the 94-year-old anti-apartheid icon is still recovering from a lung infection.

DENVER — Sara Stevenson spends her working hours surrounded by Republicans, namely the married men who work alongside her in a Denver oil and gas firm company. But after hours and on weekends, she usually spends her time with other single women, and there's not a Republican in sight among the bunch.

Friday, December 14, 2012

America’s seems to be in for another debate over gun regulation after the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School left 27 (mostly children) dead. So it’s worth reviewing five made against regulating gun ownership in the United States:

On Thursday, one day before the tragedy in Connecticut where at least 29 people were killed at an elementary school, the Republican-controlled Michigan legislature passed a bill that would allow people to bring guns into schools.

An emotional President Obama spoke out against the tragic shooting in Newtown, Connecticut on Friday afternoon, remembering the children and teachers who died in today’s tragedy. The president reflected on the nation’s high rate of massacres and called on lawmakers to take “meaningful action” to prevent these kind of massacres from taking place in the future. Preliminary reports indicate that at least 27 people, including 22 children, were killed by a 24-year-old gunman.

On Friday morning, 27 people were reportedly shot and killed at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT. According to sources, 18 of these casualties were children. This is the second mass shooting in the US this week, after a gunman opened fire in an Oregon shopping mall on Tuesday, killing 2. ABC News reports that there have been 31 school shootings in the US since Columbine in 1999, when 13 people were killed.

In a confidential 2010 filing, Crossroads GPS -- the dark money group that spent more than $70 million from anonymous donors on the 2012 election -- told the Internal Revenue Service that its efforts would focus on public education, research and shaping legislation and policy.

WASHINGTON -- A Congressional Research Service report that was reissued Thursday after Republicans complained about it before the elections still finds little evidence that the Bush-era tax cuts spurred growth or that hiking the top rates would have more than a "negligible" impact on the economy.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Dec 13 (Reuters) - A grand jury indicted a Florida man for first degree murder on Thursday in the shooting death of an unarmed, black high school student last month after an argument over loud rap music.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean government agency said Friday that working at a Samsung Electronics factory caused the breast cancer of a worker who died earlier this year, only the second time it has recognized a link between cancer and Samsung's chip plants.

WASHINGTON -- Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said she found the treatment of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice by Republican senators "appalling," arguing that her consideration to be the next Secretary of State became a "political football" that had very little to do with her actual career and record as a public servant.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal (R) managed on Friday to do what the rest of his party has been unable to: Listen to public opinion. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published in Friday’s paper, Jindal advocates for over-the-counter access to birth control, as an “end of birth-control politics.”

Thursday, December 13, 2012

The Obama administration’s initial offer to avert the so-called “fiscal cliff” included a provision that would end the ability of Congress to use the debt ceiling — and thus the creditworthiness of the United States — as a hostage to demand other policy outcomes. Employing a process invented by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Congress would have to act affirmatively to prevent a debt ceiling increase, rather than having to actively increase it.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) signaled his willingness this week to consider amending federal drug law to permit possession of small amounts of marijuana, or at least exempt new state marijuana laws from the federal drug scheme.

NBC news is reporting Susan Rice has withdrawn her name from consideration for Secretary of State. NBC’s Brian Williams reports that in a letter to the President, Rice said: “I am highly honored to be considered by you for appointment as Secretary of State. The position of Secretary of State should never be politicized. I am saddened that we have reached this point even before you have decided whom to nominate.” President Obama has also put out a statement reading in part: “While I deeply regret the unfair and misleading attacks on Susan Rice, her decision demonstrates the strength of her character and an admirable commitment to rise above the politics of the moment and put our national interests first.”

We knew working at McDonald's wasn't the greatest gig in the world, but we didn't know it was this bad.

After 20 years cooking burgers and manning the fryer for the national chain, Tyree Johnson still makes just the minimum wage, Bloomberg reports. That's $8.25 an hour in 44-year-old Johnson's hometown of Chicago, where he works at two different McDonald's restaurants.

This is the origin myth of the food safety system in the United States: The beef industry was a mess, led to awful practices by the profit motives of a few major processing companies, until investigative journalist Upton Sinclair exposed many of the atrocities of the packing plants in his 1906 novel "The Jungle," which spurred the establishment of federal meat inspections, improving safety forever. Today, beef and other meat sold in the U.S. is safer than ever.

“Where are the president’s spending cuts?” asks John Boehner. With Republicans coming to grips with their inability to stop taxes on the rich from rising, the center of the debate has turned to the expenditure side. In the short run, the two parties have run into an absurd standoff, where Republicans demand that President Obama produce an offer of higher spending cuts, and Obama replies that Republicans should say what spending cuts they want, and Republicans insist that Obama should try to guess what kind of spending cuts they would like.

Although a growing number Republicans are distancing themselves from the Americans for Tax Reform anti-tax pledge, Grover Norquist is confident that Congressional Republicans will force massive cuts to government programs, rather than accept any tax increases. On Thursday, he vowed to stymie President Obama’s agenda so much that the administration will have nothing left to do but launch an unnecessary war.

The White House last week requested $60 billion in federal disaster relief to rebuild the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, but some Republicans are again threatening to hold disaster relief funding hostage unless it is offset by other budget cuts.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Fast food workers in New York City briefly walked off the job last month to protest the low wages endemic to their industry. Over the last several years, fast food companies — most prominently McDonald’s and Yum! Brands, which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell — have reaped huge profits while employing some of the largest numbers of low-wage workers in the country.

A bizarre chain email sent to district and school board officials in the Dallas area this October titled “IRVING ISD INDOCTRINATING ISLAM” inspired a recent investigation of “Islamic bias” in the district’s curriculum. Despite the outlandish claims, the district requested that an official from the organization that created the curriculum to respond. The results of a 72-page investigation done by the organization were not surprising: there’s a Christian bias in schools, not a Muslim one.

Indiana state treasurer Richard Mourdock Richard Mourdock (R-IN) lost the election in November to Sen.-elect Joe Donnelly (D-IN) by around 6 percent. Early in the race,most polls showed Mourdock ahead, but voters seemed to abandon the candidate after he made a controversial comment about rape. “I struggled with myself for a long time but I came to realize life is that gift from God,” Mourdock said, “even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape. It is something that God intended to happen.”

On Wednesday, the hosts MSNBC’s Morning Joe laughed off Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R-MI) claims that the state’s recently-enacted right-to-work law could protect and strengthen unions by encouraging them to show more value to workers, interrupting the governor in bewilderment as he explained his argument.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Microsoft is rolling out dozens of new apps for the Xbox 360, building on statistics that show members of its paid online subscription service spend more time on it watching video than they do playing multiplayer games over the Internet.

As the last window of opportunity to pass a fully-inclusive Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) Reauthorization comes close to shutting in the final days of the 112th Congress, many are wondering why Republican House leadership, particularly Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), are so opposed to the provisions protecting Native American women on tribal reservations. Other Republican leaders — including Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA), John Kline (R-MN), Mike Simpson (R-ID), Tom Cole (R-OK), and Patrick McHenry (R-NC) — have proposed a reasonable compromise that protects Native women, but it puts them at odds with the Majority Leader.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — As "Gangnam Style" gallops toward 1 billion views on YouTube, the first Asian pop artist to capture a massive global audience has gotten richer click by click. So too has his agent and his grandmother. But the money from music sales isn't flowing in from the rapper's homeland South Korea or elsewhere in Asia.

Colin Powell, former Secretary of State under president George W. Bush, urged House and Senate leaders on Monday to support Sen. Jeanne Shaheen's (D-N.H.) amendment to extend the insurance coverage of abortion to military rape survivors.

President Obama hasn’t proposed increasing the eligibility age for Medicare. But would he agree to do so, in order to secure a broader agreement that raises taxes on the wealthy and avoids the automatic spending cuts set to take effect on January 1? Liberals are worried that he will—thanks in part to a pair of recent columns, one each by my friends Jonathan Chait and Ezra Klein.

The U.S. performed above average on international standardized tests in elementary and middle school math, science and reading, according to reports released Tuesday. But experts said the rankings, along with similar exams that test students at later ages, show a fundamental problem in America's education system: students tend to perform worse as they age.

According to a report from Sports Illustrated, at least seven NFL players have gotten rid of their personal firearms following this month’s horrific episode when Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot his girlfriend dead, then turned the gun on himself.

The latest annual report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development shows that the national homeless population held steady from 2011 to 2012, hardly good news but perhaps better than expected given the relatively weak economic climate.

The first specifics of Nelson Mandela's condition are trickling out following the former president's weekend hospitalization, and they're both encouraging and heart-tugging. The New York Times reports that his condition has been revealed as a recurring lung infection, and he is reportedly "responding to the treatment." But wife Graca Machel spoke yesterday of the difficulty of seeing him age, reports the AFP, telling a news station, "It's something also which pains you. ... I mean, this spirit and this sparkle, you see that somehow it's fading." The 94-year-old was also hospitalized for a respiratory infection in January 2011; he was hospitalized earlier this year with stomach pains.

Monday, December 10, 2012

Researchers have discovered 19 more grave shafts at an infamous Florida reform school where boys—most of them black—suffered and sometimes died under brutal conditions, NBC News reports. That brings the total to at least 50 at The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, and all of them are in an area that was segregated for black boys. "I didn't realize going in how much of a story of civil rights it was," said a professor at the University of South Florida, which conducted the study.

(Reuters) - Atheists and other religious skeptics suffer persecution or discrimination in many parts of the world and in at least seven nations can be executed if their beliefs become known, according to a report issued on Monday.

Google is the latest multinational to come under scrutiny for skirting U.S. taxes.

On Monday, Bloomberg's Jesse Drucker reported that the tech giant avoided paying $2 billion in global income taxes by moving $10 billion in revenue, or 80 percent of its pretax profit, to Bermuda, which does not have a corporate income tax. Google has nearly doubled the amount of money that it is sheltering in Bermuda since 2008.

WASHINGTON -- In a grim marker of the human cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, the Pentagon reported Monday that active-duty American troops were hospitalized in the United States at three times the peacetime rate -- with mental health injuries comprising the largest category.

Today, Governor John Hickenlooper signed an Executive Order making an "official declaration of the vote" related to Amendment 64. The declaration formalizes A64 as part of Colorado's state constitution and makes legal the personal use, possession and limited home-growing of marijuana under Colorado law for adults aged 21 and older.

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama weighed in on the contentious labor battle playing out in Michigan, condemning the Republican push to make Michigan a so-called "right-to-work" state as nothing more than a partisan maneuver that will hurt the working class.

Corporate profits are currently at an all-time high(while worker wages as a percentage of the economy have plummeted to record lows). But despite those sky-high profits, corporate income tax revenue is projected to be just 1.5 percent of GDP this year, below the recent average and far below the amount raised by the tax just a few decades ago.

Show Your Support

Hi, I would like to ask you to support this blog by viewing one of the many ads listed below and sometimes posted in the article you chose to read. Also, I would like to thank you for taking the time to view any of the content of this Blog. I hope you find a post that interest you as well as a product or service that can help you out when needed. Most of the products or services are available worldwide so be sure to view the products home page by means of clicking on the ad itself if you are interested.